Identifying Constitutional Freedoms
What freedoms are protected by the US Constitution? The words of the document can only suggest what rights are protected. In cases where ambiguity exists, there is need to resort to an authoritative interpreter to ascertain in detail the content of protected rights. In some countries, disputes about rights are settled by a legislature or chief executive. However, early in its history the US Supreme Court decided that it was the final interpreter of the Constitution, and so in order to answer this question we need to examine how that Court has interpreted the Constitution.
This book examines how the Supreme Court has done this over the 235-year course of its existence. This introductory chapter begins with a recent case involving the church that I attend each Sunday. During 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that barred me from attending my church, despite my religious obligation to do so every Sunday. Eventually, a new order was issued limiting how many people could attend services. This number was far fewer than those allowed to go shopping or congregate in many public areas. The Bishop of Brooklyn, the highest Catholic religious authority where I live, filed suit on the grounds that the Governor’s order violated the free exercise rights of the church’s members. In less than two months, the Governor’s order was held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and its doors were opened to all who wished to worship.
Court decisions vindicating rights are rarely achieved so quickly, but the speed of this decision vividly illustrates the important role the Court has come to play in protecting our constitutional freedoms. Before we can learn about what the Court has done, we need to begin by reviewing the Constitution that serves as the basis for these freedoms. In chapter 1, we’ll also consider another view of the Bill of Rights as protecting not just individuals but also groups of people–and even states–from losing their freedoms to the federal government. What we won’t find in the Constitution is the Supreme Court’s power to strike down government actions that violate its principles. How the Court gained that power is the subject of chapter 2, with ends with an explanation of the legal citations that you will see in this book.
